Thumbsucking at the Intersection of Mental Health, Politics, and Pop Culture

Main menu

Post navigation

2018 Year in Review

Ok, time (well, a little late, but still time) for the obligatory review of last year’s resolutions and the pass/fail ratings.

Finish the damn downstairs: Definite fail. I made some progress, in the same kind of way that sitting up in bed is progress toward walking from Seattle to London. Ok, maybe it was a little better than that…some framing happened. And I moved a light fixture (yes, it’s fully functioning). So that was good. At this rate, only about 38 more years to completion.

Every Day is Halloween: Pass! Well, pass in the way that the horrible sh*t in your life drives you to do something to distract you from all that horrible sh*t. I got started early with Halloween decorations (early June(?)) and knocked out a lot of new decorations that I’d been thinking about for years. You can see the earlier posts. I also actually came up with the perfect use for a big, old canvas and some other cast-off materials I have. Unfortunately, once I figured out what I wanted to do, it got more and more ambitious, and I ultimately had to bail. It will be done in time for Halloween 2019. That’s not a resolution. That’s a promise.

Read/Write—don’t watch/scroll. Pass/Fail? Hmmmm…I did a lot of reading…but plenty was of the scrolling variety. I read some excellent books, but didn’t really keep up the idea of bailing on pointless Internet foolishness in favor of reading enlightening books. As for the writing…well, you can scroll back just a smidge and see the sum total of the writing I did this year…well, not ALL of the writing I did this year, but about 80% of the writing I actually finished this year…well, the writing that extended beyond stupid Internet arguments. I did have a record number of my Internet arguments shut down by moderators. I like to think that was (mostly) because the people I was arguing with started calling me names, but moderators don’t tend to explain themselves once they shut something down.

No more hair resolutions. Well, if I can make it through my next post without resolving anything about my hair (assuming I’m going to do a post about my 2019 resolutions), I’m in business with this one. Stay tuned. I’m sure the suspense is killing you.

Be better to those closer. I’m a little conflicted on my success with this one. I guess it needs some clarifying definitions—which I’m not going to supply right now. Things got rough on a pretty constant basis. Plenty of my friends/family/colleagues of one stripe or another got into some major life changes/deep sh*t that took up a lot of my time, energy, and, in some cases, cash. A lot of those occurrences also drained a lot of my patience—patience I could no longer spare on those who are peripheral and antagonistic. So, with that I give a hearty, ‘Much love and/or go f*ck yourself!’ If I’ve been at all close to my target with this resolution (and you actually know me) you know where on that spectrum you lie. For the rest of you, consider yourself square in the middle—and please consider that a good thing.